HTGAWM Season 3, Episode 10 Recap

HTGAWM Season 3, Episode 10 Recap: "We're Bad People"

We still don’t know how Wes (Alfred Enoch) died on the night of the winter finale’s house fire — and neither, it seems, do Annalise (Viola Davis), Bonnie (Liza Weil), Frank (Charlie Weber), or any of the remaining Keating 4 antiheroes. Well, Bonnie probably knows, but no one ever knows what Bonnie knows and she’s the boss now, so deal with it. Season 3, Episode 10 finds Wes and Annalise locked up without bail in their respective cells: Wes and all his burning questions at the chilly morgue and Annalise and her grief-stricken hangover at the overcrowded Philadelphia county jail. Meanwhile, pregnant Laurel (Karla Souza) is confined to her own prison of pain at the hospital, clutching her belly and re-living the bubble bath she and Wes shared after the condom broke. It’s the same gut-wrenching hour of contemplation, self-loathing, and rage we’ve come to expect from How To Get Away With Murder, just without a wraparound-porch home base to tie everyone together in their misery. Anyone could go rogue — and a bunch of them do.

First there’s Frank, who confesses to Wes’ murder after the DA announces (lies!) that the fire, not a human, killed Annalise’s favorite duckling. Plenty of factors have led up to Frank taking this fall: Bonnie’s whimpering voicemails, years of guilt over his involvement in the car crash that caused Annalise’s miscarriage, a lifetime of never quite knowing how to live with himself. But tonight it’s the drugged-up Laurel, snarling that she loved Wes way more than she ever loved Frank, who really puts our wayward career criminal over the edge and into the police station.

Connor is the most demonstrably out of sorts, having rushed to the hospital from a regrettable hookup with Oliver’s crush Thomas. Connor’s in full-on self-sabotage mode like we’ve never seen him before, claiming to feel nothing about Wes’ death, but clearly showing a ton of animosity for the guy who waltzed in off the waitlist and destroyed all of their lives. An extra-sensitive Asher, who just wants everyone to show any emotion, damnit, repeatedly punches Connor after he yells at Laurel to have an abortion and thus save the world from Wes’ evil spawn. He’s spiraling. On some level, Connor might envy Wes for finally being off the hook for all of those murders.

Although treacherous, Connor’s heightened vulnerability is exactly what Oliver had been wanting from him all season. Without sharing any details, Connor insists Oliver truly doesn’t want to know what he still doesn’t know about Sam’s death. Oliver should go to the police, get immunity, and run far, far away from the likes of “bad people” like him. “I don’t care that Wes is dead!” Connor cries. “I’m just broken and sick and need all of this to stop.” Later on, Oliver takes the dare, transferring Annalise’s phone files to a USB and presumably sending it to the DA.

Then there’s Nate, who’s stuck in the middle of all this chaos now that the DA’s office doesn’t trust him and Annalise is in jail. How did he escape unscathed the night of the fire? Could he have been involved with Wes’ murder? Nate is just a big beefy island of secrets right now, and Team Keating’s been cut off from its formerly steady supply of au jus. What Nate chooses (or is forced) to reveal in the next few weeks will determine a lot of other people’s fates.

The rest of Season 3 will explain what really happened to Wes on the night of the fire. Here’s what we know as of now:

—Frank met with Wes on the afternoon of his murder. As we see in a late-breaking flashback, Laurel’s former flame intercepted Laurel’s current flame moments after Wes left the police station. “It’s time we talked,” Frank purrs. Yikes. But Frank also insists to Bonnie early in the episode that he didn’t kill Wes. Frank is convinced the Mahoneys found out Wes was Charles’ son and arranged to kill him and frame Annalise.

—When Laurel arrived at Chez Keating moments before the fire, she noticed the basement door open, scurried down to investigate, and saw a man running out of the storm door.

—Sam’s sister Hannah called the Philly police after the fire had started, so she is likely their “anonymous source,” or so we’re set up to believe. Yet Annalise is the one who called Hannah during her vodka-laced Bonfire of the Incriminating Files earlier that day. “Take the house; I’m done with it,” she slurred, foreshadowing her own ruin.

—Despite what the DA told the press, Wes died before, not during, the fire. We saw the coroner scrawl “HOMICIDE” on the initial autopsy. Who is the state protecting by claiming otherwise?

Annalise remains in jail for now, as Wes’ immunity contract is apparently only the tip of the iceberg of evidence the DA has against her. I have to say the burgundy jumpsuit looks pretty good on Viola. It just might be the new black…